Into the Halfway House

One of the most eloquent testimonies I’ve read recently is Michael Rennier’s Into the Half-Way House.

Michael received a BA in New Testament Literature from Oral Roberts University in 2002 and a Master of Divinity from Yale Divinity School in 2006. He served the Anglican Church in North America as the Rector of two parishes on Cape Cod, Massachusetts for five years. After discerning a call to conversion, Michael and his family moved to St. Louis, Missouri where he now works for the Archdiocese of St. Louis.

Here’s an excerpt:

Ultimately, my goal is not to point the finger at others but to examine my own conscience. Had I held myself apart from visible communion with the Catholic Church because I thought I knew better? The answer is, yes, I had. My journey towards the Catholic faith has not, at core, been a journey of personal enlightenment or one in which I have held up the Church to my own opinions and finally found it acceptable. This would be to make the Church too small, and as G.K. Chesterton reminds us, the Church is ever so much larger on the inside than it seems from the outside. Mine has been a journey towards faith. I have learned to believe first so that I might later begin to understand rather than understand so that I might then believe. My intellect simply isn’t up to the challenge that the latter option presents. I trust that when Jesus breathed His Holy Spirit into His disciples He was anointing His Church to be, among other things, the guardian of the sacred and simple truth of the Gospel.

I have learned to rest in the truth that the Church teaches. I do not make my own salvation through knowledge or emotional experiences, through following this teacher or that. Whether I realize it or not, God is doing a great work in me. It was begun at the Cross, is sustained by the Holy Spirit, and will be completed at the final judgment.

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